Choice is a tricky thing. It gives you a sense of power. The feeling that your life is in your hands, that the direction you take depends on what you decide in a moment.
But the power to choose brings with it a tremendous pressure — the pressure of making the right decision. Not just for ourselves, but sometimes for people we care about too. And along with that comes the quiet responsibility of carrying the outcomes of those choices forward, whether they turn out the way we hoped or not.
Whether our lives are actually controlled by fate or not, sometimes I wonder if this is why the idea of fate can feel tempting & strangely comforting. The belief that maybe the paths were already laid out somewhere, and we are simply walking them. Because if that were true then when things don’t go the way we imagined, we could allow ourselves to sulk for a while in the sweet absence of regret, and then accept & adapt no matter what, believing that that is the only choice? ; )
